v0.11.0: the Creatures Update

This is a new, major release of the Sketchy Maze beta. There are a bunch of new tweaks to gameplay including controller support and an A.I. overhaul for the enemy creatures.

Download the latest release now or see the change log for full details. The highlights of this release are described below.

New Features

Creatures are more aggressive

The game’s creatures have had an update to their A.I. and many of them will now become hostile to the player character. There have also been updates to their behavior when controlled by the player character. Some of the changed behaviors include:

The Azulians will track and follow the player character and jump if you are above them. Azulians are friendly if the player character is an Azulian or a Thief. Each color of Azulian has a different aggro radius, speed and jump height with the Blue Azulian being the weakest of them all.

The Bird will search for the player and dive-bomb at them when it sees a shot it can take. Birds do not attack players who can fly, so they are friendly to the player character if you play as the Bird. When under the player’s control, the Bird can dive to kill other mobs such as the Azulian.

The Anvil, under the player’s control, is invulnerable to damage from enemy mobs and it can crush other mobs by jumping onto them.

Game controller support

Sketchy Maze can now be played using an Xbox-compatible controller, including some from Nintendo such as the Switch Pro Controller.

If you have a Nintendo-like controller where the “A/B” and “X/Y” buttons are each swapped compared to an Xbox-like, you can choose the “N Style” button layout in the game’s settings. Every PC game controller in my house is a Nintendo-style one, so this button mapping is a first-class citizen in my game!

See the Gamepad Controls in the Guidebook for full details!

New Levels & Doodads

Two new levels have been added:

• The Zoo: this Tutorial level shows off basically all of the doodads in the game and features a “costume room” to try playing as different creatures.
• Shapeshifter: this addition to the First Quest needs the player to swap between different creatures to complete the level

And there’s a new doodad:

• The White Azulian is the strongest Azulian and has a larger player search radius, speed and jump height than the Red Azulian.

Scripting updates for custom doodads

The JavaScript syntax used by doodad scripts now supports many modern ES6 syntax features, including the let and const keywords, arrow functions, Promises, and for-of loops, which brings a massive quality of life improvement for programming custom doodads!

For the technical details, I’ve replaced robertkrimen/otto with dop251/goja - check their documentation for updates on ES6 syntax support!

There are also new features in the scripting API to allow doodads to search the level for the player or other actors. Check out the functions tagged “v0.11.0” on the Script API Reference for full details.

Check it out!

Download the latest release for Windows, Mac OS or Linux!